


The Only Son

by tallinns



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-17
Updated: 2019-01-17
Packaged: 2019-10-11 10:44:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17445407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tallinns/pseuds/tallinns
Summary: Dantooine has always been a place of peace, taking the most violent hearts and softening them until they, too, can hear the whispers.Fire works in the opposite way. Fire takes the softest hearts and burns them until they cannot hear anything at all.Kallo Kunul's fate will always be intertwined with the golden grass of Dantooine's rolling hills and open fields, but it will also always be intertwined with the flame that burned the fields to ash.





	The Only Son

**Author's Note:**

> I would first like to thank my friend and fellow Clone Wars veteran, Liam, for always being willing to discuss Star Wars lore with me and for being consistently supportive of my antics. An example of his support would be the 22nd of December, 2018, when I frantically messaged him "In November I made a promise to myself to finish my short story by the new year!!" and a choice expletive. His response, naturally, was a repetition of the same expletive, followed by "WELL GET TO WORK YOU STILL HAVE TWO WEEKS!"
> 
> Kallo's story would still be lost in the abyss of Google Docs if I didn't have the ability to open our outdated Internet messaging app and yodel at Liam. I am quite lucky to be going into the Clone Wars Renaissance with such company.

In the fields of Dantooine, there was an ancient enclave, and there was a little boy and his anooba pup who went out each morning just to look at it standing on top of the hills. The little boy had never seen anyone go in or out of it, nor had he gone inside himself - partially because he felt that there was something important within it that someone would someday come back for, and partially because he never wished to disrupt its peaceful watch of Dantooine’s rolling hills. His mother watched him go out each morning - “for a walk” he said, but when she left the homestead later to feed the eopies, she saw him watching the enclave as he always did, with the herding anooba by his side. It made her feel nearly as peaceful as it did him, but she never could quite fend off a gripping fear that one day she would understand his fascination with the old enclave, and it would be accompanied by someone arriving in a proper starship to take her son away. Her husband smiled kindly when she told him her fear, and assured her that Jedi only take infants, dear, Kallo is nearly nine.  
One early morning, the nearly nine-year-old Kallo jerked awake from a dream he often had, in which he was being chased. When he had first begun having it, the dream had scared him, but eventually he had learned that if he just looked outside, he would see the enclave from across the hills and he would stop feeling so afraid. On this day, he looked out the window and saw that the sun had not even risen yet, so he rolled over to try and go back to sleep. After several minutes of trying, he promptly became quite irritable, sat up, and leaned over to where the anooba was asleep at the end of his bed.  
“Ace!” he whispered. “Ace, are you awake?”  
Ace blinked open his eyes. To those who did not know them, anoobas often seemed intimidating or aggressive - but neither of these descriptions were true unless the anooba had been trained to be that way. Ace was two years old, and had been trained by Kallo’s parents to peacefully herd the family nerfs. He could be very fierce if the situation demanded it - he had once warded off a confrontational offworlder who had pulled a vibroknife on Kallo and his mother on their way home from town by snarling and growling so much that Kallo had been genuinely worried that he might rip the man’s arm off. The offworlder had scampered, clearly afraid of the same thing, and Ace had immediately become his usual passive self afterwards. He was never needlessly aggressive, but he was incredibly loyal, never straying far from his pack or missing an opportunity to defend them.  
“I can’t sleep,” Kallo told him. “Let’s go outside.”  
Ace, who adored the outdoors and to a lesser extent was always up for harassing the nerf herd in the fields, became quite excited and promptly leaped off the side of Kallo’s bed. Kallo, too, got out of bed and sat on the floor to put on his socks and boots. He gave Ace a pet on the head, and when he stood up, the pair went quietly down the stairs and out the front door of the homestead. Kallo meant to sit in the grass outside until he felt tired enough to go back to bed. It was slightly damp, but neither boy nor anooba minded. Kallo looked past the farmhouse in which the eopies (and sometimes Kallo himself) slept, over the hills of his homeworld, and spotted a very odd, red-hued shape in the distance. It seemed like - and Kallo wasn’t entirely sure because he had only seen a small number of starships in his life - someone had tried to choose an incognito place in the hills to leave a starship. A place very close to the enclave, a place that neither Kallo nor his parents would be able to see from their windows if they looked out of them during the night.  
“Ace!” he said. “Ace, do you think that’s a ship out there in the hills?”  
Ace wagged his tail excitedly.  
Kallo thought about this for a little while, debating his options. He could stay outside for a couple minutes and then go back to bed - or he could go investigate this mysterious ship. He doubted his parents would approve of the second choice, but there was a strange pull, a strange sense of safety, surrounding the ship, and he knew, though he didn’t know how he knew, that this ship belonged to a Jedi.  
He stood up and looked at Ace, who leaped up excitedly, and the two started to run. It took them under five minutes of decently fast running (mixed with a little walking on Kallo’s part) to reach the ship. As Ace sniffed around, Kallo ducked under the wingspan and sure enough, there it was - the logo of the Galactic Republic painted onto the hull. Kallo looked around, seeing no signs of the ship’s owner, and realized that the only logical place to look for them would be inside the enclave - it was a Jedi enclave, after all. Kallo and Ace ran another hundred or so metres to its entrance and peered through the great doors. Kallo could feel the enclave’s familiar sense of peace and calm, but it was coupled with something new, something he could not place - like the presence of another person. He took a deep breath, letting the enclave’s benevolence calm his nerves, and stepped inside.  
It was colder inside than he had expected it to be. There was a long hallway leading away from the entrance, lined with tall rectangular columns of stone. Kallo felt very small in comparison, but not in the way he felt small when he saw large nerfs or large hills. He felt small in the way he felt when he saw tall trees - smallness accompanied by wonder, by a desire to climb. To his side, Ace was sniffing at every surface he could. Kallo began to walk down the hall. When he reached the end, he noticed that the current hall diverged into two more halls. He paused for a moment to contemplate. If he wanted to follow whoever it was owned the ship in the hills, how was he going to find them?  
He realized his legs were quite tired. He sat down to rest while he thought some more about how hard it was going to be to find the ship’s owner. From the outside, the enclave always looked quite big, and he had never been inside before. He was gripped suddenly by fear; what if he got lost and never came out again? What if his parents never found him?  
Stop that, said what must have been his logical mind, I’m going to find the Jedi! Yes, that was right, Kallo thought. If you think about anything long enough, you’ll always find the answer.  
He rested for a while longer, Ace sniffing at the halls beside him, and focused on how the enclave’s energy moved around him. It felt like a second home, somehow, even though he had never been inside before. Moving his attention to the energy, he suddenly registered the presence of the person from earlier, but this time it was much closer. And suddenly, Kallo knew which way to go. He sprang to his feet, Ace sprang to attention, and they sped off down the left hallway. Kallo wasn’t sure how he knew which way was the right way, but he followed his instincts until he reached an open atrium in the centre of the enclave. There were vines growing down the walls and a very tall tree in the middle of the room that looked as if its branches had never been trimmed, nor the remnants of its leaves swept off the floor. Kallo’s mother might have had a fit looking at the state of the floor, but he thought the room was wonderful. Immediately, Ace trotted forwards, nose on the ground, and sniffed all around the tree.  
“Hello,” came a bright voice from across the room. Ace barked once in surprise and Kallo spun round instantly - he had been so focused on his surroundings that he had completely forgotten about the presence he had sensed earlier. In one of the doorways leading out of the atrium stood a tall Twi’lek girl with white skin, perhaps eighteen, wearing long brown robes and holding a small blue cube in her hands. Beneath her robes, Kallo could just make out the hilt of what had to be a laser sword, the weapon of a Jedi. Kallo had never seen one before, but he had heard his friends talk about them - they were legendary weapons that could cut through anything in the galaxy, they said. Once Kallo had recalled this particularly intimidating bit of information, he became quite scared and did the only logical thing he could think of doing: he ran across the room and hid behind the huge untrimmed tree, grabbing Ace and crouching down against the trunk.  
He thought he heard the Twi’lek laugh lightly. “Don’t worry!” she called. “I’m not going to hurt you. You can come out.”  
Kallo didn’t; he was too focused on what would happen if that laser sword went through his chest. He heard the footsteps of the girl as she got closer to his hiding place, and then her face appeared from around the side of the tree. He leaped up in fear and bolted sideways until he was on the opposite side of the trunk, completely out of her sight, but Ace didn’t follow. The anooba was seemingly fascinated by the appearance of the face.  
“Ace!” he hissed. “Ace, come here!”  
But Ace did not; he sat back on his hind legs and wagged his tail happily at the girl.  
“Hello!” said the girl’s voice. Kallo saw her hand extend towards Ace for sniffing. Ace licked it.  
Kallo hesitated. If Ace thought the girl was a good sort (and Ace had a very good sense of morality), then surely she was.  
The girl’s hand extended around the trunk towards him. “Hi!” her voice said cheerily. “My name’s Anori. What’s yours?”  
Kallo assessed the situation. She seemed very nice, and Ace clearly thought so as well, but she did have the lightsaber and whatever that blue cube was. Maybe if he kept her talking, he would have the eventual chance to run away from her. He was good at running. If he could outrun the nerfs while they were being herded, he could probably outrun anyone, even if they were a Jedi.  
Shyly, Kallo stepped around the tree to face the girl. She was considerably taller than him, with twin lekku that were draped over her shoulders. She had large, cool, pale blue eyes that complimented her white skin, a small nose, and a bright, full smile. The robes she was wearing were simple; a tawny brown tunic with a deeper brown cloak and tall boots. In one hand she held the strange blue cube.  
“Is that your ship in the hills?” Kallo asked her.  
“Yes,” she said. “I do hope it’s still there. Is this your anooba?”  
“Yeah, this is Ace,” he said, reaching out to pet Ace’s head. “He’s a good boy.”  
“He certainly seems to be,” said Anori, smiling at him.  
“Are you a Jedi?” Kallo blurted out.  
“Yes,” Anori replied, her smile growing. “I’m a Padawan.”  
“What’s a… pah-dah-wan?”  
“It’s a word for student,” she told him. “It means that I’m still learning how to be a proper Jedi.”  
“Is it hard?” Kallo asked. He had never met a Jedi before, but he had seen holoimages of them and heard his friends talk about them. Whenever he went to sit outside the enclave he thought about what it would be like to be a Jedi.  
“Sometimes,” said Anori. “But I have lots of people to help me. It’s important to ask for help when you need it.”  
“My parents help me with lots of things,” Kallo said shyly. “Do your parents help you?”  
“Oh,” said Anori. She paused for a moment, glancing at the vines growing over the floor. “No, my parents can’t help me anymore.”  
“Why not?” he asked. He couldn’t imagine not having his mother to help him; he felt suddenly sad for Anori.  
“I left my homeworld when I was very young, even younger than you are now,” Anori said.  
“I’m almost nine!” Kallo said quickly, somewhat upset that she thought he was young. Ace barked as if in agreement.  
“Of course,” said Anori with a grin. “My apologies, you are very mature. I was three when I left my parents.”  
“Why did you have to leave?”  
Anori paused again, like she was thinking about the best way to respond. “I left to become a Jedi,” she said.  
“But why did you leave your parents? How could they help you if you left?”  
“Being a Jedi means that you have to leave them,” Anori said softly.  
“Why?”  
“That’s just...the way it works.”  
“I could never leave my parents,” said Kallo. “You’re really brave.”  
“Thank you,” she replied, smiling again.  
“What’s that?” said Kallo suddenly, pointing to the blue cube she was holding.  
“It’s a holocron,” said Anori. “Here, want to see?”  
She held it out for him. He picked it up in both hands and found it was much heavier than he had been expecting, but there was something else too. A sense of knowing, of understanding. It felt very old and wise. Ace stood up, lifted his head, and began to sniff at it.  
Kallo remembered what his mother would say about manners. “Thanks,” he told Anori.  
“You’re welcome,” Anori replied. “Do you know what it does?”  
Kallo shook his head.  
“It has information inside,” she explained. “This one has the names of everyone who used to live in this enclave.”  
“People lived here?” asked Kallo. The holocron fit nicely in his hands, but he didn’t see any of the names Anori was talking about.  
“Yes,” said Anori. “Thousands of years ago, this place was filled with Jedi.” She looked around the atrium as if she was still seeing the Jedi she was talking about.  
“Why did they leave?” Kallo asked, running his finger over the sharp angular corner of the cube.  
Anori paused again. “They were killed when a Sith Lord destroyed the enclave,” she said eventually. “The Jedi rebuilt it again, many years later.”  
Suddenly, Kallo felt very afraid. “What if the Sith come back?”  
Anori smiled. “They won’t. The Sith have been extinct for a thousand years.”  
Kallo held out the holocron towards her. “Why do you need names?”  
Anori took the cube. “I’m looking for somebody,” she replied simply.  
“Who?”  
“A great Jedi,” she said. She smiled, her blue eyes twinkling. “I don’t believe you told me your name.”  
“Kallo,” he said. “I’m going to be a farmer like my dad,” he added proudly.  
Anori bowed and said, “Pleased to meet you, Kallo,” to which Kallo mimicked her action, glad he was being treated like an equal. “Pleased to meet you, too,” he said.  
“Won’t your parents be missing you?” asked Anori, glancing up towards the sky. The sun was beginning to stream in through the open roof. Kallo hadn’t even noticed that the sun had risen; it wouldn’t be long before his mother got up to feed the animals. He nodded shyly.  
“Come on,” said Anori. “We don’t want to worry your family.”  
Kallo agreed entirely. “Come on, Ace,” he said, and the trio travelled out the great enclave doors into the morning sun as it creeped over the hills. Kallo turned to look at his home, and saw no lights on in the windows. If he hurried, maybe he could get back before his mother awoke.  
“Thank you for your company, Kallo,” Anori said. “Is your house close by?”  
He nodded, raising his arm to point towards it. Anori turned to look at where he was pointing. “It’s beautiful,” she told him.  
Kallo wasn’t sure about beautiful, but he was certainly looking forward to getting back inside his room. The enclave had made him feel very strange. A good strange, he thought, but all the same - he missed home.  
He turned back to Anori. “I hope you find the great Jedi,” he told her.  
“Thank you. So do I.” She smiled down at him. “It was wonderful meeting you, Kallo. Maybe I will see you again one day.”  
Kallo returned her smile. He hoped so, very much.

In the farmhouse in the hills, Kallo Kunul was dreaming of being chased. He could never see his pursuers any more than he could outrun them. No matter how far he ran, it was never far enough. When he looked over his shoulder, he saw nothing but shadows, but he could always sense the things following him, and he could never stop running.  
He was sixteen now, and he had never been off of Dantooine. He had not had the dream for years, not since the day he first entered the enclave. He had been inside many times since that day, spent many hours reading on the floor of the ancient library. Neither Anori nor any other Jedi had ever come back, and eventually Kallo had stopped hoping, though he never stopped visiting it. He wasn’t entirely sure why he kept going back, but he loved the mystery and the sense of peace that came with being inside something so old that so rarely saw any visitors.  
And now, in the dream, he was running towards the enclave. It stood tall and proud atop the hills, as it always did, and Kallo suddenly felt overcome by a sense of safety. He stopped running and turned around, and there was nobody there. He sat down in the grass, and there was still nobody there. He realized how exhausted he was, and he laid down onto his back, and -  
And blasterfire tore through the fabric of his dream, jolting him awake. Panicked, he looked around the interior of the farmhouse. On the end of his bed, Ace was up and growling apprehensively.. Kallo’s initial thought was burglars, but he saw no signs of attempted break-in, and the animals would have made a fuss if anyone had come through the door. He could hear them making mild noises of terror in the stables below the loft where he was sleeping, but nothing anywhere near serious enough to indicate an entrance. His second thought was pirates - their neighbours had been the unfortunate victims of a pirate raid just last month - and his third, scariest thought was that the Clone Wars had finally reached Dantooine. He threw off the bed sheets, stepped into his boots, and took his parents’ comlink from his bedside table. There was no reason for the Republic or the Separatists to turn his home into a battleground. He didn’t know much about the politics of the war, but Dantooine was part of the Republic-controlled Outer Rim, and had no tactical advantage that Kallo was aware of. He knelt down onto the floor, reached under his bed, and pulled out the blaster rifle that he had only fired a handful of times, that he always kept in case of trouble.  
This seemed like trouble now. The blasterfire, coming from the direction of the homestead where his parents were asleep, had stopped after several shots, but Kallo’s hands still shook as he grasped his weapon and cautiously followed Ace across the floor towards the staircase leading down to the stables. The two descended the stairs, Ace patrolling the front and Kallo bringing up the rear, holding the rifle aloft. Once they reached the bottom, Kallo attempted to comfort the frightened animals as he made his way towards the tall doors of the farmhouse. He took the rifle into his shaking hands and gently pushed one of the doors open partially, Ace at his heels.  
“Back, Ace!” said Kallo. He stuck his head through the door and craned his neck to see where the blaster shots were coming from. He was hit with blunt shock.  
His family’s homestead was on fire.  
Kallo wasn’t sure how he made it back inside the farmhouse without collapsing, but somehow he did. The door slammed shut behind him and he had to force himself to take a rattling breath. He registered then the sound of a hundred Separatist battle droids marching across the fields, their metallic bodies clanging loudly as they did so. The animals around him seemed to show concern as Kallo’s legs gave way and he slid all the way down to the floor.  
His only thought was his parents, his parents, his parents - who were inside the homestead, who were sleeping peacefully. He had a comlink; why had they not contacted him to tell him what was happening?  
And then Kallo realized who the blaster shots that had torn him from his dream had been for.  
He would have started to cry if his body had let him, but adrenaline and rage were coursing through his veins and he had a rifle in his hands and he was going to -  
What was he going to do? He was a teenager against a company of engineered fighting machines. He was going to do nothing but get himself killed.  
Beside him, Ace began to whine quietly. Numbly, Kallo placed a hand on his head and weighed their options.  
They could stay, paralyzed by fear, in the farmhouse, and hope the droids marched past it. Except Kallo wasn’t an idiot, and they wouldn’t march past it.  
They could open the farmhouse doors, drawing the droids’ attention and almost certainly bringing Kallo’s death, but giving the eopies - and Ace - a chance to run.  
The nerfs in the fields were dead. They wouldn’t have survived the fire. He looked into the face of the eopie in front of him and felt Ace’s fur underneath his fingertips. None of them had asked for this. His parents were gone, and Kallo would soon be gone too. Someone had to make it out. He cursed under his breath. There was no time for hesitation.  
When he stood up, his legs weren’t shaking anymore. In one synchronous movement, he turned around, flung open the farmhouse doors, and ran into the fields.  
All at once, the animals rushed forwards, with Kallo standing amongst them like some messiah. Blasterfire ripped open the air instantly; the droids had turned their aim to the flock and its shepherd. Kallo took aim and fired several shots back at them, certain that they had missed. After that his only focus was running, the feeling of his boots on the dirt and the animals blurring as they ran beside him. He could hear them scream as they fell, and then the only thing keeping him going was his survival instinct, his need to preserve his own life.  
The guilt for self-preservation would follow.  
Ace, at his side, was slowing his pace in order for Kallo to keep up with him. Ace was capable of running speeds that Kallo could never reach, and yet here he was, slowing down so that he could stay with him. Kallo tried to yell at him to go faster, but couldn’t find the breath he needed to do so.  
“Ace!” he choked out. “Ace, go!”  
But Ace wouldn’t go, and suddenly, with the most vibrant flash, Kallo knew what was going to happen right before it did.  
A blaster bolt caught his best friend in the back of the leg and the dog fell, crumpling to the dirt. A horrible sound ripped itself from Kallo’s throat; he skidded to a stop and dropped to his knees at Ace’s side, his hands desperate to help, useless in practice. His mouth was moving, repeating the same word - no, no, no - over and over again.  
The sounds of mechanical legs as the droids advanced, of Ace whimpering in pain, of blasterfire still flying towards them. With desperation, Kallo tried to take Ace’s body into his arms and carry him, anything to survive, anything to not lose his closest friend. He heaved the dog up and stumbled towards the hills, where the eopies were looking back in concern, safely out of range of the droids.  
Ace was heavy, and Kallo’s grip was shaky, and all he had was the hope - until he had the screaming pain of a blaster shot to his shoulder. He cried out and stumbled to the ground, Ace falling from his arms.  
The droids were too close, and Kallo was in an unbelievable amount of pain. He reached out for Ace, exposed like a nerve to the precision of the blasters, and then a shot hit Ace directly in the heart. The animal’s chest heaved once, twice, three times, and Kallo couldn’t make a sound. His hands grasped Ace’s body as he took his last breath, his eyes full of fear.  
Kallo’s vision blurred with tears. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t do anything but ache. The pain in his shoulder was nothing compared to the pain in his soul.  
And the blasterfire kept coming. Kallo screamed at them to stop, but they were machines, they were lifeless, they would never stop. He screwed his eyes shut. He would not leave Ace, so small in death, alone to burn.  
He heard a noise, like an animal’s cry, but it was fuzzy in his ear. Then an eopie appeared in front of him, placing herself in between him and the incoming onslaught, and nudged his wounded shoulder intently with her nose. Kallo cried out, but then she dropped onto her front knees, as if beckoning him to climb on her back.  
Kallo looked at Ace through teary eyes. The eopie made an angry noise, somewhat reminiscent of his mother when telling him it was time to go to bed.  
His family was gone. Laying down to die alongside them was no longer an option.  
He clambered onto the eopie’s back and wrapped his arms around her neck and instantly she was off, her thin legs carrying them across the fields. Kallo looked over his shoulder at Ace’s lifeless body, and felt fresh tears gather in his eyes. He bowed his head into the eopie’s neck and let the tears run down his cheeks, because what was the point of stopping them?  
Soon, his eopie was joined by others, and the flock was racing across the hills, away from their once-home, towards a sunrise.

By morning, they reached town, and when Kallo walked down the street with his flock of eopies, people stuck their heads out of abandoned building doors and windows and nearly laughed in exasperation at the farmers’ son, riding an eopie and leading eight more, like some wretched saviour. They called for him to come inside, but Kallo refused to leave the eopies outside by themselves, even though the pain of his wounded shoulder was staggering, he was horribly hungry, and his vision kept blurring at the sides. Eventually, a Cathar woman named Merat, who had been a friend of his mother’s (and who seemed impressed with Kallo’s stubbornness) said that she would stay outside with the animals while the local doctor, who had once treated Kallo for a bad cough when he was six, dressed his shoulder and gave him food and water. Kallo was too shaky and thirsty to argue anymore.  
“Where are your parents?” one of the other farmers asked as Doctor Thrant began treating Kallo’s wound. “How did you get out?”  
But Kallo was so exhausted that he merely shook his head and fell right to sleep.

The Republic arrived within the day. Kallo and the farmers watched the gunships land in the hills from the edge of town, and Kallo could have sworn he saw a flash of an amethyst blade. Within an hour, a squadron of clones and a teenaged Togrutan girl who looked about Kallo’s age marched into the town, and the farmers burst from doors and surrounded the intruders. The girl raised her arms in surrender, beckoning her troops to do the same.  
“We’re here to help you,” she said. She had deep red skin, bearing silver tattoos around her eyes and chin, and the montrals framing her face had strips of purple on white. Dressed in the tan-coloured tunic of a Jedi, her eyes were the most shocking feature about her; they were a vibrant shade of violet.  
From her waist hung a single lightsaber.  
“Are you a Jedi?” asked Kallo quietly.  
“Yes,” she said. “I’m Sif - er, Commander Zavros.” She gestured to the armoured man standing next to her. “This is Commander Wolffe. We’re here on behalf of the Galactic Senate.”  
“Will you fight?” said Kallo.  
She paused. “Yes.”

A lost squadron of droids arrived in the town only a few hours after Sif’s arrival, and she and the clones held them off with ease. Kallo’s hands no longer shook when he gripped his rifle, and his wounded shoulder burned, but he barely felt it. All he felt was anger as he fired at a droid head and watched its metal carcass fall to the ground at his feet. He approached it, with his rifle ready to fire again, ready to make the droid pay for what it had done, but there came a hand on his wounded shoulder, accompanied by the awful burning feeling.  
“The droid is dead,” said Sif from behind him. Her voice was soft, but it cut through the curtain of rage that sheathed Kallo’s mind from reason. “I know what it did, but there’s no point in destroying it out of anger. It achieves nothing.”  
Kallo closed his eyes. His fingers shook against the trigger, but he let the gun fall to the ground beside the droid. Behind him, the group of farmers began to emerge from behind the walls and crates they had been using as refuge. Sif turned to face them.  
“These droids must have been separated from their battalion,” she stated. “I don’t think they meant to find you.”  
One of the farmers, a middle-aged human man named Grath, who lived in the nearest farm to the north from Kallo’s parents, looked judgmentally at the Togruta. “What if they managed to transmit our location before you destroyed them?”  
“They didn’t,” Sif said. She didn’t seem to see fit to elaborate any further than that.  
“I’m sorry,” said Grath, “how old are you?”  
“I’m fifteen,” Sif replied coolly.  
“And these guys take orders from a fifteen-year-old?” he snapped, gesturing at the clones. Kallo was forcefully reminded of the numerous disagreements his own father had had with Grath. Merat, the woman who had helped the eopies upon Kallo’s arrival, put her hand on Grath’s shoulder and shook her head urgently, but Grath threw her off and continued to advance towards the Togruta.  
“Well,” said Sif, glancing at Wolffe, “clones age twice as fast as normal humans, so technically, Wolffe’s only ten.” (“Thanks, Zavros,” said Wolffe). There was a glimmer of amusement in Sif’s purple eyes, but her face was entirely stony.  
“Don’t get smart,” said Grath. “You’re not old enough to be leading this fight.”  
Sif took a step towards him. “I’ve been fighting this war for the better part of a year now,” she said. “Not the war in the Core Worlds - this war. The Outer Rim war, where droids murder families who stand in their way. I’ve had men die under my command, I’ve lost my friends, and I’ve seen Jedi who should have long outlived me die on the battlefield. Do not tell me I am too young.”  
Grath said nothing more, and Kallo knew that in the brutal honesty of her words, Sif had proved herself. The truth within what she had said could be felt by everyone around her; there was a remarkable empathy within the girl. She was a year younger than Kallo himself, and yet had he met her mere days ago, he would have thought she had seen a galaxy’s worth more than he ever would.  
Today, he was no longer sure what he was going to see within a week. He was no longer the son of Dantooinian farmers; he was an orphan without anywhere to call his home. He wondered if Sif sometimes felt the same way, and considered asking her, but she had already moved on. She left Kallo and the farmers standing alone in the streets.  
Kallo looked at Grath. “She’s right,” he said. “You have no idea what she’s been through.”  
“She’s a Jedi,” said Grath. “They’re nothing but puppets of the corrupt Republic. You have no idea what she’s done.”  
“The Jedi aren’t the Republic,” Kallo said.  
“No,” Grath agreed, “but they aren’t warriors, either. They’re getting their orders from somewhere, and it’s not their Order.”  
“You don’t think they’re here to help?” said Kallo.  
Grath paused. “We’ll see, won’t we?”

Sif leaned over the holoprojector. “If Wolffe and I meet them here, we can have the rest of the clones flank them on the hills here.” She indicated the areas she was referring to on the map. “That should weaken them significantly. Then we can lead them back to this abandoned Jedi enclave, meet up with Master Windu, and finish them off. If everything goes right, we’ll have them gone by morning.”  
“If everything goes right?” echoed Kallo. “How often do things go wrong?”  
“Nothing ever goes entirely as planned,” said Sif.  
That’s comforting, Kallo thought.  
“This is a textbook battle,” said Commander Wolffe, standing beside Sif with his hands behind his back. “We could tell you the Seps’ strategies with our eyes closed. They’ll think we’re retreating and they’ll follow us back to the enclave. They won’t be prepared for Master Windu.”  
“I hope you’re right,” Doctor Thrant said from the back. Kallo shuddered, not wanting to think about what it would mean if Wolffe was wrong.  
“What if Master Windu can’t meet you there?” came another voice, belonging to a human man who had clearly tried to shroud himself in the shadows near the edge of the room. Kallo surveyed him cautiously.  
“I’ve been in contact with him,” Sif said. “He’s just landed in the fields to the west, and he and his troops are advancing to meet us at the enclave as we speak. He’ll be there.”  
“You better be right,” said Grath. “Or a lot of us will be paying for it.”  
“If anything goes wrong, we’ll be ready,” Sif assured them. “I know a lot of you haven’t been in a war zone before. Most of you hadn’t even fired a blaster before this week. We will get your home back. I promise.” She folded her hands in front of her. “The Force will guide us.”  
Kallo could sense that her sentiment was not lying well with the rest of the farmers. Of course, it was Grath who assured his suspicions. “We’re going to need a lot more than the Force to get us out alive,” he said.  
“Or perhaps the Force is all we will need,” Sif suggested. She said it with such weight, such resonance and certainty, that Kallo almost let her convince him she was right.  
“I want to come,” Kallo said immediately. “I know the enclave, I can help you.”  
One of the clones behind Wolffe barked a laugh. “You’re too young, shiny,” he said. Kallo remembered Sif calling him Boost, once. “You’d only get in the way.”  
“I’m older than her!” Kallo protested, pointing at Sif. “And technically, all you clones are only ten!” There was an immediate moment, like the calm before the storm, of surging irritation from the clones, and Kallo promptly decided that his best chances at avoiding more conflict was to power through before anyone could retort. “I heard battle droids kill my parents last night,” he stated. “I need to come with you.”  
“You’ve fired a blaster, what, three times in your life?” said Boost.  
Kallo struggled for a few moments attempting to formulate a smart response, but he had no argument against that.  
“Boost,” Sif said with an air of thoughtfulness, “Kallo doesn’t have to be involved in the actual battle.” She turned her gaze to Kallo. “You said you’ve been in the enclave before?”  
Kallo nodded.  
“And you remember how to navigate it?”  
Kallo nodded, less confidently.  
“Well then, that’s already an edge for us. If we end up having to retreat into the enclave, having a navigator would be a good thing,” she said. “Wolffe?”  
“I agree,” said Wolffe. “You might yet be useful, kid.”  
“Hang on,” piped up Grath from behind Kallo, “if you’re letting the boy come, you’re letting the rest of us come, too.”  
“No,” said Boost immediately. “One stowaway is more than enough.”  
“Most of us know how to use blasters,” said Grath, with a glare at Kallo, whose parents had not believed in using blasters to solve your problems. “I’ve been shooting for twenty years.”  
“Give us this chance,” added Merat, who had yet to speak out to the clones or their Jedi. “This is our home. We cannot stand idly by as others fight for us.”  
Sif paused, glancing at Wolffe with the same glimmer in her eyes - although this time, it was not amusement but something else. “I say they come,” she said. “Perhaps the Force has guided them to us.”  
“Zavros is bad at pep talks,” said Wolffe to the farmers. “But you can do this. You’ve got nothing to lose. Sometimes that’s all it takes.”  
Kallo wasn’t sure about the Force, and he suspected that Wolffe wasn’t, either. Both Kallo and Wolffe were soldiers - Wolffe had been bred for war, Kallo forced into it mere days ago - and if there was one certain thing in the universe, it was the strength of people when they were united. Even the Jedi were soldiers now.  
“Alright,” said Sif, shutting off the holoprojector and unknowingly proving Kallo’s point. “We leave in two hours. Get what you need.”

Kallo had everything he needed; his rifle and the clothes on his back. Some of the farmers were bringing small keepsakes - Merat was holding a small wooden toy. When Kallo asked her why she had it, she softly said it had belonged to her daughter. Kallo was immediately ashamed; he hadn’t even thought to ask the others if their families were safe.  
“I’m sorry,” he said.  
“Do not be,” said Merat. “There was nothing anyone could have done.”  
There was a moment’s pause in which Kallo realized how selfish he had been over the past two days. Then Merat said, “I don’t mean to pry, Kallo, but your parents -”  
“They’re dead,” Kallo said without thinking. “The droids killed them in the middle of the night. I’m only alive because - because I was sleeping in the farmhouse. I-” He wanted to tell her about Ace, to get it all out, but his throat had closed and tears were stinging his eyes, and the words got stuck with the guilt.  
Merat moved suddenly and embraced him. He was so taken aback by this small act of kindness that even more tears started to come, and he cried for a time. He cried for his parents, for Ace, for the animals that had perished, but most of all he cried selfishly - he cried in pity of himself.  
And he hated himself for it.  
When Merat moved away, Kallo dried his cheeks with his sleeves. Behind Merat, he could see Sif, watching with her hands clasped once more in front of her. Immediately, he turned away, not wanting to show the Jedi his weakness, but later on something else struck him. He wondered if Sif had ever been shown the same kindness that Merat had showed him; if she had ever felt a proper embrace. It brought him back to Anori, the Twi’lek girl from the enclave all those years ago, whose parents she had never known.  
And suddenly he pitied the Jedi, and realized that perhaps Sif, with all her composure and all her strength, was that way simply because she had no other choice.

The outer fields were burning. This was no surprise to Kallo; they had been able to see the smoke from town, but seeing the damage up close, all the dead and dying plant matter and the burnt bodies of animals, was nearly enough to bring the tears forth again. He choked them back and tightened his grip on his rifle.  
They had left the eopies in town with a few of the farmers who had decided to remain. Kallo had been resistant to leave the animals, but when Sif had pointed out that they would be much safer there than in the midst of a battle, he had agreed. He had said his goodbyes and promised that if he survived, he would return to lead them back into the fields once more. Sif had proposed that the group members pair up to take the clones’ speeders back to the enclave, so Kallo was seated behind her, watching the stalks of wheat blur past them. Grath was with Boost (neither of them seemed particularly pleased with this arrangement), and Merat with Wolffe. Doctor Thrant had chosen to come, to Kallo’s mild surprise, as well as the shadow-shrouded man from the war room, who called himself Eniko and who Kallo was quite certain was not a farmer. In the light of the sun, Eniko was quite handsome, but he delved away from any inquiring questions about himself and had twin blasters in holsters on his hips.  
Sif rode fast, equal amounts haste as uncertainty, and Kallo could sense discomfort coming off of her in waves that had nothing to do with the droids waiting for them. Kallo had never been on a speeder before, and quickly found that he was not entirely at ease either. He much preferred eopies, and was very glad when they dismounted on the top of a large hill.  
Sif took a pair of macrobinoculars from a pack off the side of the speeder, approached the very tip of the hill and dropped onto her stomach in the tall grass. Wolffe gestured to the others and they mimicked her action, leaving Boost and another clone behind to guard their rear. Sif held the macrobinoculars up to her eyes, scouting for the droids.  
“No sign of them yet,” she commented, shifting her gaze to the right, and then the left. “Wait - yes, I see them. They’re closer than I expected, we had better get moving.”  
And without another word, she handed the macrobinoculars to Kallo, pulled herself smoothly forward and to her feet, and leaped down the hill.  
“General Skywalker has rubbed off on her more than I thought he would,” Wolffe commented to one of the clones before getting to his feet. “That’s the cue, boys! Scrap ‘em!”  
“From a distance, of course,” said Eniko, the first words Kallo had heard him speak that didn’t betray an obvious attempt to shift the conversation away from himself. Eniko lifted a blaster from his hip and took aim at the squadron of droids approaching, and Kallo followed suit, his heart beating so strongly that he could feel it in his entire body.

Kallo hit five droids. Beside him, Merat had gotten her hands on a blaster and was doing rather well, he thought. Even Doctor Thrant managed to take out at least a couple droids. Garth was outdone only by Eniko, who was doing an awful job at maintaining his shaky cover story of being an offworld diplomat, much to Garth’s irritation. In fact, it was so clear that Eniko had had more than enough practice getting shot at that Kallo nearly handed him his own rifle. He wasn’t sure if he admired Eniko or feared him.  
Sif and Wolffe, who had spent the past few minutes in the middle of the barrage at the bottom of the hill, were moving slowly backwards up it, drawing the droids with them. Sif’s purple lightsaber was clashing with red blasterfire and Wolffe’s escape was only covered by his ability to shoot faster than three droids at once.  
“Time to go!” yelled Sif as she reached the top of the hill. Clicking off her lightsaber, she mounted her speeder and beckoned to Kallo, who scrambled to his feet and hurried over. Then they were off again; Kallo looked over his shoulder and saw the droids following.  
“They’re still coming!” he called.  
“Good!” Sif said. “If we stay in their vision, they’ll follow us right to Master Windu!”  
Kallo couldn’t do anything but hope that she was right.

In its appearance, the enclave had not changed since Anori had left it all those years ago. Kallo dismounted quickly and stared up at the building with the same awe he had had as a nine-year-old boy - but everything felt tainted. Perhaps it was because he was so much older now, both physically and emotionally, or perhaps it was the presence of the droids - but neither of those explanations felt right. He swallowed nervously. His fingers reached down to pet an anooba that was no longer there, and when they grasped only empty space, he took a rattling breath. The enclave was much closer to the burning fields than the hill they had just left had been, and he could nearly feel the heat of the flames.  
“Kallo,” came Sif’s calm voice, whispering in and out of his ear. “Are you alright?”  
“Fine,” said Kallo immediately, though he wasn’t. He looked around. “Where’s Master Windu?”  
Sif’s face did not betray concern, but her eyes did. “He’ll be here,” she said, her voice strong.  
“What if he’s not?” asked Kallo shakily.  
“He will be,” Sif stated. “Come on. The droids are still coming.”  
When the droids did come, they came in greater numbers, bearing greater weapons. Kallo realized immediately that if he was to survive, if he was to see Dantooine saved, Master Windu was his last and only hope. Sif and Wolffe, as formidable as they were, could not hold off an entire battalion of droids; they simply were not enough.  
“Where is he?” Kallo asked Sif, his voice rising in urgency.  
“He will be here,” Sif replied, as unmoving as ever.  
But then came the worst of it all. In the burning fields where Kallo’s home had once been, there was the sound of a gunship descending. The group began to back into a circle, and Kallo turned to face the flames. The gunship’s doors slid open, and figures began to emerge from inside its metal body. The clanking meant droids, but the figure in the lead was quite organic - and holding a beam of red light in her hands.  
The white-skinned Twi’lek emerged from the flaming grass wearing black, and for the first time Kallo understood what rage could do to a person. The once-familiar eyes, originally the prettiest blue, had become a shade of yellow like acid, with rings of blood-red around the pupils. Her face was twisted with anger, and there was a brutal scar down her bare shoulder. The lightsaber she held was burning red, and on her other shoulder she wore a heavy plate of armour displaying a painted symbol of the Confederacy of Independent Systems.  
Kallo stumbled backwards into Boost, who put up his arms to stop himself from tumbling directly into the grass. “Steady, soldier!” he said.  
Sif seemed lost for words, her blade ignited but doing nothing more than humming in the hot air. Kallo realized then that Sif had had no idea that the Twi’lek - for it could not be Anori, Kallo would not let himself call her Anori - would even be there, nor did Sif believe she could hold her own against her.  
It was over.  
And then the Twi’lek’s voice rang out as clear as a bell. “You are surrounded. Surrender, and you may yet be spared.”  
There was no reply except for Garth, slowly lifting his weapon.  
“This is your only chance,” said the Twi’lek. “If you do not surrender now, it will not be long before all of Dantooine is aflame. Surrender, and bring me Mace Windu.”  
“You are Anori,” said Sif, her voice as loud as the Twi’lek’s, her face no longer betraying any fear. “You are Anori Tevan. We do not fear you, for we know where you have come from.”  
The Twi’lek held up her arm and her droids stopped moving. She advanced alone, lightsaber still ignited, until she was directly in front of Sif, bright yellow eyes against equally bright purple. “You,” she said slowly, “do not know me.”  
“I know you were Master Windu’s Padawan,” said Sif. Even now, in the face of death, she used Windu’s title. “I know you met Count Dooku on a backwater planet and he changed everything you had ever known to be true. I know, Anori.”  
“You know nothing,” said the Twi’lek. “I am not one of your Jedi.”  
Up close, Kallo thought he could see a shadow of the girl he had once so admired. Her eyes, sickeningly yellow, flickered towards him and stopped entirely in recognition, and for a moment, just a moment, her gaze softened.  
Just for a moment, but it was enough.  
Sif had not missed it, either. She made eye contact with Kallo for the briefest of seconds, her shock betrayed by her face. Then, as if she knew what Kallo was about to do, she shook her head slightly - but it was too late.  
Kallo said Anori’s name.  
Anori did not look at him.  
And still, Sif persisted. “I know Dooku hurt you, Anori. He has hurt many Jedi. You do not have to do this.”  
Kallo could sense Anori’s anger growing, like thorns coming from inside her skin, as she looked directly into Sif’s eyes. “Bring me Windu,” she said through gritted teeth.  
“I can’t,” said Sif. “I’m sorry, Anori.”  
Kallo wondered if Sif was always this empathetic.  
“Very well,” said Anori coldly. “Remember that you were given a chance. That is more than many receive.”  
Then, several things happened in quick succession. The white helmets of hundreds of clone troopers appeared from over the hills to the west, led by a man with brown skin and an amethyst blade. Sif lunged, and Force-pushed Anori backwards several paces. Garth began firing on the droids behind them, immediately followed by the rest of the group. Eniko pulled both blasters from their holsters, and Kallo made a run for the enclave, knowing that if they were to survive the few minutes it would take Windu’s troops to arrive, they were going to need cover.  
“Come on!” he yelled. The others began to join him, timing themselves and then racing across the grass towards the heavy enclave doors. Sif, lightsaber ignited, slid into position behind a stone wall and closed her eyes for a fleeting moment before leaping out and deflecting fire as the rest of the group found cover.  
Merat had nearly made it to the enclave when a red lightsaber, thrown across the battlefield by its owner, stabbed through her chest. Kallo screamed her name as she fell into the grass.  
He could hear Sif yelling at him to stay where he was, but she need not have said anything; Kallo could not have moved if he tried. It was like he was frozen, his eyes locked on the body of the woman who had only ever done him kindnesses, who deserved infinitely more than this.  
Someone grabbed his shoulder and shook him violently back to reality. Kallo looked wildly around for his attacker, and found only Garth.  
“Kid, can you even hear me?”  
Kallo nodded frantically, his hands shaking.  
“Listen,” said Garth, “I know she’s gone, but you have to focus, or you’re going to get yourself killed right beside her. She would have wanted you to survive.”  
Kallo kept nodding, mostly due to the shock that came with the bizarreness of seeing Garth, of all people, be sensible. In another moment, Garth had slipped away, and Kallo was leaning out from behind cover to fire back at the droids, focused only on survival.  
Anori was advancing on the enclave. Kallo aimed at her, but it was no use; she deflected the shots easily. She reached out with the Force, and Kallo felt her darkness swelling outwards like an invasion. She jumped, turning over in the air, and brought her blade down hard against Sif’s. Sif struggled for a moment to throw her off before slipping underneath the weight of the blades and rolling. She came up behind Anori, who was easily able to parry Sif’s strike. It became quickly evident that Sif was not a match for the Twi’lek, who fought with such aggression that Kallo was fearful for Sif’s life. He tried to hit Anori in the shoulder, but she once again deflected the blast with ease, continuing to pursue Sif, who managed to block several more of Anori’s savage strikes before she was thrown off balance and the next one took her lightsaber right out of her hand.  
Anori once again advanced like a seething animal, her weapon raised, ready to kill. Kallo, still, could hardly believe this was the same kind-eyed, holocron-carrying girl he had met so long ago. Her face was twisted with hatred.  
Then, an eruption of friendly blasterfire burst from the west and Mace Windu soared through the air towards his former apprentice. Anori swung around, got her weapon up just in time to block Windu’s own, and in a flash was duelling him.  
“I knew Windu would make it!” yelled Wolffe.  
Kallo couldn’t help but smile in victory; Windu and Anori were battling across the grass, but Anori was not a match for her master’s power.  
In the middle of the battlefield, Sif used the Force to pull her lightsaber back to her hand. Without a moment’s hesitation, she got to her feet and entered the fight once more. Wolffe ran to her side.  
“I guess the faith everyone has in the Jedi isn’t misplaced after all,” said Eniko, emerging from cover with his blasters up.  
“I guess not,” said Kallo, who wasn’t sure if he had ever had doubts.

Anori lunged, her weapon outstretched, but Windu was untouchable. He fought far more viciously than she remembered, and for a moment she wondered if what she had done had left him unbalanced. The thought satisfied her.  
That moment of satisfaction brought her guard crashing down, and Windu’s next strike was powerful enough to send her to the ground. She collapsed, scrambling onto her back only to find the tip of her opponent’s lightsaber inches away from her throat.  
“That wasn’t a fair move,” she said indignantly.  
She remembered saying something like that in her first months as Windu’s Padawan, after he had upsurged her during a sparring session. Judging by the look on his face, Windu was remembering the same thing. His features softened for a moment, before hardening again, the lightsaber never faltering against Anori’s throat.  
“Dooku has destroyed you, Anori,” said Windu.  
“Dooku showed me true power,” Anori said viciously.  
“You mean he hurt you, and called it power.”  
Her anger surged. How could he stand there and preach, after what he had done to her? “The Jedi hurt me and called it peace!”  
Windu did not even flinch. “You are lost,” he said.  
“And you are a puppet!” yelled Anori. “You abandoned me! You and the rest of your precious Jedi Council!” Her voice broke, and when she spoke next, it was quiet. “You left me,” she said.  
Windu was still cold, in both presence and demeanour. He always had been. Stiff, rigid, unmoving… and secretly filled with anger. Anori had always been able to see a side of him that the others, even Master Yoda, had been blind to.  
“I thought you, of all people, would understand,” she said.  
“You fell to the dark side, Anori,” said Windu. “I will never understand.”  
Anori closed her eyes and let the Force surge through her once more. “You destroyed me,” she said. “Not Dooku. You.”  
“You are under arrest,” said Windu.  
She lashed out, letting the Force erupt from within her, driving everything around her backwards. Windu was forced backwards, and entire metres away, the Togruta girl and her clone companion stumbled against the power that had come from Anori.  
She was up on her feet instantly, grabbing her discarded lightsaber and running towards the fields in which her gunship had first landed. There was a brief tug on her awareness, and reluctantly, she let it stop her for a moment.  
The boy from the enclave stood there with a rifle in his hands, staring at her. He was much older now - perhaps almost the age she had been when she had first met him. Kallo. The boy who was to be a farmer like his father. His wide eyes, still so hopeful despite everything that must have happened to him, told her all she needed to know.  
She turned away and ran into the flames.

Kallo stood in the remnants of the battle. There were droid carcasses scattered across the fields. He nudged one with the toe of his boot. It did nothing. He let his rifle fall.  
He made his way across the hill and dropped to his knees beside Merat’s body. She looked peaceful in death, not small the way Ace had been. Her fingers were wrapped around her daughter’s small wooden toy.  
He wasn’t sure how long he stayed there for, but eventually he felt a hand on his shoulder, and looked up to see Sif standing behind him.  
“It’s over,” she said. “You did it.”  
He could not find words to reply; he felt his entire body sag a little. At what cost, he wondered, at what cost?  
“Well!” came a sprightly voice from across the hill. Kallo turned his head and saw Eniko marching proudly across the fields. “That was eventful. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to need to finish my run. It’s been an honour fighting alongside you all.”  
“You’re a smuggler?” said Wolffe, immediately on edge.  
“Yes, we’ve known that for some time now,” said Sif.  
“No one bought my diplomat story?” said Eniko, looking genuinely hurt. “Considering how quickly I had to come up with it, I thought it was rather good.”  
“You don’t dress like a diplomat,” said Garth gruffly.  
Eniko looked down at his long coat and hip holsters. “I suppose that’s fair,” he said.  
Kallo softly closed Merat’s eyes with his fingers and got to his feet. “Why didn’t you leave?” he asked Eniko. “We didn’t even ask you to stay and fight.”  
“Didn’t want to risk getting shot on my way to the spaceport,” said Eniko. “Honestly, I thought I would be safer with you.”  
“Hmm,” said Sif. “There is much more to you than you think, Eniko.”  
“I like you Jedi and all, but if you could stop speaking in riddles, that would be great,” said Eniko, and Kallo nearly laughed in exasperation.  
“Excuse me,” came Master Windu’s calm voice. “I’d like to congratulate all of you. You fought very bravely today.”  
Grath opened his mouth, likely to say something offensive, so Kallo interjected. “Thank you, Master Windu. And thank you for your help in reclaiming our home.”  
“I would like to offer Republic support in rebuilding all you have lost,” said Windu. “Commander Zavros and I are needed on the battlefield, otherwise we would remain to oversee reconstruction.”  
Kallo paused. “With all due respect, Master Windu, you can’t just rebuild our farms. My parents, and all our crops and animals are… gone.”  
Even as he said it, Kallo knew he was just rephrasing a truth he had known since he had watched Ace die. He swallowed, and forced himself to say it aloud. “There’s nothing for me here anymore.”  
“I see,” said Windu, with a tone that told Kallo he did not really see at all. He opened his mouth to say something else, but was promptly cut off.  
“If you need a place to go, kid, I can always use more help,” said Eniko enthusiastically. “I got kicked off my homeworld when I was twelve!”  
“Why did you get kicked off?” Sif inquired.  
Eniko paused. “Something illegal.”  
“Figures,” said Sif, grinning.  
Windu did not look quite as amused. “I’m willing to… overlook your past dealings, Eniko Harava, because what you did here today saved a lot of lives. But know that if you have disagreements with Republic law enforcement at any point forward, I will not intervene.”  
“Everything I do is legal! I promise,” said Eniko.  
“I’ll come with you,” said Kallo suddenly.  
All heads turned towards him.  
“You will?” Eniko said.  
“Yeah, sure,” said Kallo. “I want to see the galaxy.”  
He looked around at the grass, and the Jedi enclave, and the burning fields in the distance. “Maybe one day I’ll come back here. But it’s not my home. Not anymore.”  
“Fair enough,” said Eniko. His voice was surprisingly quiet. He cleared his throat and spoke again, much livelier this time. “Well, let’s get a move on, then! This shipment won’t deliver itself.”  
And with that, he strode off. Windu inclined his head towards the farmers, and Kallo acknowledged it with the same action. Wolffe saluted, and then the clones set off to make their way back across the fields.  
Sif remained. Her eyes, with that same glimmer of amusement, were on Kallo.  
“You better go after them,” said Kallo.  
“I’ll catch up,” she replied. She bowed slightly. “Goodbye, Kallo.”  
“Thank you,” said Kallo. “Thank you for saving Dantooine.”  
Sif shrugged her shoulders. “It wasn’t me,” she said. “It was you and your friends who saved Dantooine. I merely… helped guide your hand.”  
Kallo smiled. “All the same, thank you for being here. We couldn’t have won without you.”  
Sif heaved a sigh. “Dantooine may have been saved, but the war only grows. Now that you are leaving this world, you may be seeing much more of it.”  
“Maybe,” said Kallo, “but I’ll be ready for it.”  
They held each other’s gaze for a second, Sif’s eyes still glimmering. Then she said, “May the Force be with you,” and she was off, racing across the grass, back into the war.

Kallo left the eopies in town with Grath and Doctor Thrant, who agreed to take care of them and make sure they lived long, good lives. Kallo said goodbye to the one who had carried him through the fields on her back, and told her that maybe, one day he would be back. Then, he took one last look at the fields. The fire was very nearly gone, but there was smoke on the horizon. It obscured his once-home.  
For a moment, he thought he saw a dog-like figure in the grass. He blinked, and it was gone. Then Eniko called his name, and he turned around and ran all the way through town without looking back once.  
Almost like he was being chased.


End file.
